“…Although the contribution of changes in intracellular Ca 2ϩ (Ca 2ϩ i ) has received particular attention, notably within the framework of the excitotoxic model of injury, early increases in intracellular Na ϩ (Na ϩ i ) also occur and contribute to the pathophysiology of neuronal death (Lipton, 1999;Martinez-Sánchez et al, 2004). Sodium influx increases the demand for cellular ATP to maintain the Na ϩ gradient (Chinopoulos et al, 2000) and may contribute to neuronal injury by promoting, for example, the following: membrane depolarization (Haddad and Jiang, 1993;Calabresi et al, 1999), neuronal swelling (Goldberg and Choi, 1993;Chidekel et al, 1997), reverse-mode glutamate reuptake (Roettger and Lipton, 1996), cytosolic Ca 2ϩ accumulation via reverse-mode Na ϩ / Ca 2ϩ exchange and/or impaired mitochondrial Ca 2ϩ uptake (Zhang and Lipton, 1999;Breder et al, 2000;Czyż et al, 2002), Na ϩ i -dependent increases in NMDA receptor-mediated responses (Yu and Salter, 1998;Manzerra et al, 2001), and the activation of second-messenger pathways (Cooper et al, 1998;Hayasaki-Kajiwara et al, 1999).…”